“The real world is much smaller than the world of imagination”Ecce Homo – Friedrich Nietzsche

Fantasy today is becoming more and more popular, fighting the resistance it had had decades ago. Today we have thousands of movies and millions of books coming out. This poses the question though: Why even read Fantasy as a genre? Specially today, when the “serious” people have embraced the banner of the pragmatic and scientific being, we still adhere so much to an apparently “useless” form of literature and entertainment, even though it is more and more popular. Well, to this question I will have to return to one of the first theorists that sat down to reflect on the issue in the 20th century, that is, J.R.R. Tolkien.

But before I start with the quotations, I’d like first to invite you to rethink the word “use”, since today it is linked strongly with the idea of a personal profit and (almost) a professional growth. Today many business minded people just can’t see the allure towards this form of escapist literature, since it does not provide an immediate (monetary) benefit. The “use” of something is thus what evaluates if something is even worth pursuing and/or keeping, which has sadly devolved to a situation in which the distraction has become less engaging and more generic. Even today, when our society has defended a more bleak worldview of “correctness”, imagination and fantasy have flourished against the forces that ask us to reason. But the old professor of Oxford once said, in his famous essay On Fairy-Stories:

“Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy it will make.”

Tolkien defines Fantasy as a normal human feature that has to be nourished to make a perceptive person. This is based on the ground of the three features that the genre has in itself: Recovery, Escape and Consolation. To make the explanation short, each element that should be in a good faerie-story must permit the reader (gamer or watcher) to observe reality with other eyes while resting from the real world and finding pleasure and joy in an ending that satisfies.

Thus escaping into a fantasy realm is in itself not a bad thing, but good and helpful, since it will change our point of view and let us rest of this reality that, at times, seems chaotic and senseless. It is true we can not really leave the real world, but changing your perception on a problem after a moment of rest always will help put things into perspective.

The “use” of Fantasy lies not within the profit we make but the inner healing and the change of perspective. Also, since it is being part of our nature, we always feel drawn to it no matter how some try to drown that feeling of attraction towards the mysterious. Since the beginning we have reveled in our imagination, giving explanations to our surroundings through myth.

Today most of it is reflected through our fascination not only of the fantastic, but also of the beyond and even the horror. Thus, we do not only indulge a whim, but a necessity that drives us to see the magical in our world. In some form or another, no matter how scientific minded we are, we always find interest in the possibilities the world could offer, no matter how exaggerated we may think it is.

The ‘need’ to take this timeout is rarely overcome, and even those who claim they have, enjoy a movie or two around these topics. Claiming we don’t have a use is just a way to express disinterest in a particular theme, which doesn’t mean the person does not need his share of escapism. Fantasy just does it in its own way.

As people today can be Football fans or Hemingway enthusiasts, those who follow the genre of the faerie are passionate about something that permits us lay back for a moment and observe things with other eyes. The downside of our taste, though, is that it has gone trough a depreciation since, at least, the 19th century. Even Tolkien had to refute the fact that the art of creating a good faerie story was, in his time, considered to be exclusively for children, since their stories seemed vain and simplistic.

But specially today, with the growth of the genre and the different media it touches, I think it is something we can’t ignore anymore. It has become more serious and more “grown up”. If not, then why would a series of books, turned into a TV show, become so popular and be able to contain mature topics such as war, poverty, famine, prostitution and other topics?

“Fiction is fiction.”, the introduction to a Quenya dictionary would state, ” But it is driven up to a limit where it takes the opaque, resisting form of a reality.”

One thing is for sure: today’s Fantasy is different from the one in Tolkien’s time, but we owe it not only to his work, but to his adamant defence that we shall enjoy the stories for what they are. The genre is a broad world that makes us imagine and re-imagine. I definitely think that reading, playing and enjoying it is important to us, if only to find solace and boosting our wills and perspectives. It does not need a “use”, it is just natural and it is part of us.

I love Tolkien. Anyone who has read my blog knows that I measure the quality of many other books by his standard. Also, I have come to enjoy the great epos Game of Thrones by Martin. When asked to compare both, I just don’t know how to answer. Both universes are quite unique and totally different. I always wanted to compare both, but at the end this turns out to be a futile effort. I hope to show how futile using this comparison in one element that appears in both worlds: the image warfare.

War is almost essential in most fantasy novels. Specially those dedicated to medieval worlds will, at one point play out the confrontation in a full scale battlefield. In Tolkien we find this specially in the battles for Minas Tirith and Helms deep. In Martin almost everywhere, from the battle in King’s Landing, to the “salves uprising”, all the way through the fight Tyrion has to endure at the end of the first book to impress his father.

This is where the first differences start. The attention to detail is different in each author. Even though Tolkien tends to be very descriptive, some parts of the fight remain very vague. Here, we find the efforts of our heroes, as they charge valiantly into battle and kill orcs to the left and the right. In Martin, however, we find that there are a lot of elements that have a part at the same time: mercenaries, knights and their code of conduct, tortures of both sides, etc. In other words, if we compared the series under the standard of realism, leaving magical creatures aside, we would find a much better scene in Martin’s epic.

This is because most of the influences both received when writing. Tolkien, for starters, is a reader of germanic sagas, in which the focus of the battles centers on the heroes: Siegfried, Beowulf and others. Each hero is there because of its grand powers, the abilities it has and, above all, the destiny they have. After all, the sagas are based on the deeds each protagonist has. Back in the time, the germanic tribes believed that those deeds were what marked a person and what made them noteworthy. No commoner could aspire to achieve the recognition the epic heroes had. In Tolkien, those heroes were very clear: Aragorn, Theodén, even the strong Eowyn.

Martin, on the other hand, is part of a generation in which the epicness is overshadowed by realism. There are no real knights in shining armour, and those who believe they are, are overridden by personal flaws and mistakes. At the end, even the great hero dies in the most dire circumstances, not achieving their ideals as they imagined. We also have to remember that Martin, in an interview with Dragon a few years back, spoke for his love of historical roleplaying, in which the consistency of his characters was more important than them surviving a conflict. The story of his legionary who had to commit suicide to maintain honour is a good example for that. Thus, the common people appear alongside the “terrible” mercenaries and the squires aspiring to get a position in court.

This would bring into question the appearance of the hobbits in the grand scheme of things. For Tolkien, the hobbits were the representation of the common people, who sometimes would be even stronger than an epic hero. But then again, those few who appear tended to be the ones charged with a greater destiny: Frodo carrying the Ring to Mount Doom with Sam as his aid, Merry and Pippin destined to become leaders of their people. The closest moment of common people without a destiny fighting was when the Shire rebelled to the forces of Sharky.

In Martin, instead, we have many times less than inspiring moments of battle, in which the real heroes are not appreciated and the ones who claimed credit end up seizing all recognition. This gritty reality is the one that drives many of the conflicts in the novels, making it sometimes impossible to declare black and white. While in Tolkien we clearly see who is bad and who is good, in Martin it shifts and it depends on the moments and on our own perspective. There are even times in which the most good-hearted guy destroys more than help.

The Battle at Pellenor Fields, by Alan Lee

And this basic difference is important. In Tolkien we want to enjoy the heroes, not the reality. This escapism, as the author would define it on his essay on faery tales, is a necessary part to understand his works and his characters. Instead, on Martin, we have a reflection on how conflicts are moved and the author attempts to give a full image of what is happening in a convoluted time. Thus, when we approach him, we can not attempt to grasp a defined line, which makes some situation even more surprising than in epic fantasy.

It is not bad to be somewhat predictable. Sometimes we just enjoy a success story, on other days, we have to face the gritty realities that a person can provoke with unwanted actions. But in general, we enjoy our great authors, depending on our tastes and, above all our moods. In any case, I recommend a back to back reading of those two series, which for me are classics without any doubt.

As a side note, I do recommend anyone interested in real medieval warfare to read George R.R. Martin. It is a pretty accurate description of Europe around the XIII century.

One of the most common misconceptions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work I have heard of many times in my life is the source of influence of the writer. A lot of music bands inspired by Middle Earth’s creator often referr to themselves to as “celtic” music, making a reference to the folk that seem to appear in between the lines of that fantastic author. But further analysis shows that this is not precisely the main inspiration of our writer.

Where does this big confusion come from then? Here we have to return a bit historically: celtic people were not the only people who dominated Europe back a few millenia ago. Specially around the year 0, according to christian counting, various tribes known to the Romans as the germani used to share space with them. This meant in peace and in war: many of the chiefs of the clans had wives from the other people. Even some artistic elements were shared among those people- the knots that adorned objects and some mystical symbols.

Celtic knot; a common image the celts used to adorn their objects.

The usual areas where the celtic tribes resided were France (Gauls), Spain and England and Ireland (Picts being the most famous). This usually would lend is to believe that Tokien’s influence when writing The Lord of the Rings are those mysterious constructors of Stonehenge.

This in some way is understandable; the English are specially proud of their national hero, King Arthur, and they love to show off the legends around Avalon, the Round Table and other legends. Their main influence is celtic… at least in the mere basis of the narrative structure. What we forget are later additions to the myth. First off, the main corpus of the legend was formalized in France, more specifically in Normandy, in the north, by a lesser cleric called Chretien du Troyes. In other words, the great part that we know now is part of a french creation, not an english one.

Second, we use to forget the influence the germanic people had in the territory of the British Isles. Early in the Middle Ages Danish, Anglo and Saxon conquerors entered the territory and formed kingdoms, from which many of the cultural ways of the people and their words came from. Specially strong was the influence if Normands during the Battle of Hastings (1066 a.C.) which reconfigured the whole political map on the islands. Although the celtic element was not forgotten, the legends often got a germanic overhaul. This explains much of the story elements that appear in the legend, alongside its christian tones: the Round Table, the warrior’s code of honor and the need of showing prowess in battle and wisdom, which reflects the main traits of Woden (Odin, Wotan, Oden, etc.).

Also, if we want to understand Tolkien’s grand work, we have to see what he studied: although he knew the Arthurian Legends, he is more known for his essay Beowulf and His Critics and a recent edition his son, Christopher, edited. This last book is a scholarly work on a translation of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, which is a legend of a germanic hero. It even starts with mentioning the genesis of the gods, Wotan included.

His biggest strength, after all were the germanic languages. Even the Tolkien Professor in one of his classes mentioned that it is rumored that Tolkien entered into his classrooms reciting a vast piece of one of the sagas, in a supposed attempt to scare off students and thus getting less essays at the end of the semester.

We also see it in many of his elements in his famous trilogy. First we have the riders of Rohan, which behave almost exactly like the Saxon did, even the language is a minor variation of that people’s words. Also we have a strong evidence in the army of the dead that Aragorn and his companions go to confront.

Modern representation of a draugr. It is important to know that the horned helmeth is just a myth, since germanic people (and thus vikings) could find no use in such ornamented helmets.

In short, we have a group of ghosts that had in ancient times sworn allegiance to Isildur, but when the time came to confront the dark lord Sauron, they hid in the mountains. The traitors died there and became specters who stole the life essence away from anyone who trespassed their territory. The dishonorable dead remind the reader very much the germanic “vampire”, the draugr, a warrior in dishonor that only lives on in spirit to steal the lives of other warriors and the family of the ghost. If you observe the movie, which was pretty accurate in the representation of the specters, you will see exactly those features on them. Only heeding the dishonored call on the Pellennor Fields under Isildur’s heir releases them of their eternal curse.

As you see these are just some of the elements that make me think that Tolkien, apart from christian, was more influenced by germanic literature and imagery than celtic. Somehow, we see a part of every big saga of the old nordic kings reflected in the novel. No matter what influence though, the epic fantasy trilogy is definitely worth its position as one of the best and most complete novels in the fiction universe.

May they smile upon your way!

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Welcome to a blog of gaming, movies, books and some history. In here I explore the stories that have carried us over decades, yes, even centuries, to what defines us today. I hope you enjoy it and comment, I am always open to respond!
This blog is updated whenever possible, once a week.